


giving up the gun

by talia_ae



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: F/M, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-13
Updated: 2011-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:50:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talia_ae/pseuds/talia_ae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark is good at coding, not at relationships.  But now she and Eduardo are airing out their dirty laundry in front of lawyers, and there's a complication.  A big one.  Also: Dustin and Chris are surprisingly in touch with their feelings, and are tired of being so chipper all the time, thanks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	giving up the gun

**Author's Note:**

> So in this fic, the timeline for the lawsuit is sped up. This was written over the summer, then I put it aside for a while, then it was edited and made snazzy, and here it is! First fic written for this fandom.

The hearing is a waste of her time.

Okay.  Her lawyers would tell her to take everything more seriously.  Her lawyers would tell her that there's money at stake, serious money, as well as much of her reputation and that she's not only being sued _once_ , she's being sued _twice_ and would she please stop doodling cats during testimony, Mark.

Whatever, it isn't like she's kidding when she says that she has better things to do, because she actually does.  She's not sure why they still don't get that the money isn't what matters.

And it's easier to draw cats than it is to be forced to reflect about all the shit that went down.  So.

Look, it's just... there's a lot of things she doesn't care about.  There's a lot of things.  Like, she doesn't care about music that same way that Dustin does, or politics the way that Chris does (except she does it in this everything-is-fucked-up way where she's pretty sure Chris is just watching a doomed ship sink).  She doesn't care about what people think.

That's not true.  She cares a lot about what people think.  She just doesn't care about what he thinks anymore.  And if that's going to get her through the endless legal procedures, then once it's done, the first thing we do let's kill all the lawyers and get back to her wonderful company, please, where she can care as publicly as she likes and needs so that she can change things, so that she can have a serious effect on the world.

Oh yes, the lawyers. Well, their job is to dig up everything, whether it happens sooner or it happens later.  It's what she expects, it's what she pays them to do.  But Eduardo's lawyers are good as well, no expense spared. A lot of stuff is going to come out and it won't be pretty.

But it's okay.  She doesn't care about the lawyers, and she doesn't care about Eduardo. (Anymore).

(That's a lie, Mark).

(Stop thinking in parentheses).

Besides.  There's a limit to how far the law can take them, and hopefully this will be over before she actually has to confront him.  They can stretch it out, but eventually even Sy and Gretchen will run out of things to talk about.

-

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: you okay?

Hey,

just wanted to make sure that everything was alright with you out there in California.  Things are getting insane here over studying drama and random crap-- it must be nice not to have to worry about that anymore.

I mean, not that you don't have stuff to deal with on your own right now.

Sorry.  You know that I'm really bad at this sort of thing over email, Mark.  Call me so I can know what's up and we can actually try to talk.

Love,  
Chris

From: mark@facebook.com  
To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: Re: you okay?

Hi.

I'm fine.  Don't worry about the lawsuits.  My lawyers have informed me that they do not want the case with Eduardo to go to court, so we will probably end up settling once everything is over, however much longer that takes.  It could be days or it could be months.  The Winklevosses are a different story.  They're less sympathetic.  Apparently they could end up looking just as bad as I would to a jury if we play it right, so we'll see about that.  There could be a settlement, but I don't know what they want from me besides my writing an editorial in the Crimson announcing Facebook was their idea and I'm signing the company over to them, which is clearly untrue and not ever happening.

It's okay.  Don't worry about it.

-Mark

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: what's up

Dustin.  Hi.

You PROMISED me you would take care of Mark.  She's my roommate and I can't watch out for her from across the country, besides, I am getting very worryingly robotic email responses from her. And it's not like Eduardo can do it either, since he's suing her for gazillions of dollars and all.

Fix things please.  I'm worried.

Love,  
Chris

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: I'm trying

I really am I swear.

But it's Mark, you know?  she hates having people do things for her, even if it's like, buying her a real lunch.  I never thought it was humanly possible for a person to survive solely on beer and like, twizzlers and shit.  The more you know.

how am I supposed to fix this?

Love you too.

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: hide the twizzlers in the vegetable crisper

That girl will eat salad if you have to force her, I swear.  Twizzlers and beer?  DUSTIN.  I am beginning to suspect that my best girl friend is actually a 15 year old boy at heart.

Look, try talking to her.  That works with people.  Always works with you, anyways.

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: huh

I asked, and she said she's calling you later tonight.  Hope the time difference doesn't fuck things up too much, I'm curious now.

she was eating saltines and seltzer.  that's an improvement?

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: Re: huh

No it is not an improvement.  That's just sugar and carbs.  Though I guess seltzer is better than Red Bull.

And okay, I'll talk to Mark and find out, since you are apparently incapable of doing so.

And do not say that it is because you are a dude.  

-

She begins to switch it up at the other deposition.  Draws birds and flowers instead of cats.

God she wants this over with.  The Winklevoss twins are and have always been idiots.  Fine.  They're entitled and pissed that for once, something didn't go exactly the way they wanted it to in their silver-spooned lives, or maybe they're pissed off that they got beaten by someone who couldn't have made it into their stupid little club unless she wasn't fully clothed.

But the other deposition, the other lawsuit-- well, it sucks that her lawyers won't even let her talk to Eduardo.  Yell at him.  Whatever it would take so she could have a chance at making him understand.

-

"Chris?"

Chris switches the phone to her other ear, nestles it between her head and shoulder while she ties damp hair into a sloppy bun.  "Hey Mark.  Dustin said you wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes.  Please.  I can't talk about this to anyone else." She sounds anxious, which is new, coming from Mark.

"Mark, if it's a legal thing it's fine to talk about it with Dustin.  I know I disparage him a lot but he is actually a very intelligent person."

"It's not a legal thing.  And my lawyers told me I shouldn't talk about that with anyone other than them."

"Okay."  She pauses, letting Mark fill in the silence.

"It's just, I don't have Wardo to talk to anymore."

"Yes..." Chris trails off.

"And I can't talk to Erica even though she's my only other female friend because I think I've pissed her off irreparably--" but not pissed off _Eduardo_ irreparably, Chris wonders, but there's no time for that, "--and so you're a girl and I can talk to you."

"Oh, sweetie."  Chris modulates her voice so it sounds like it does when she's talking to one of her younger sisters.  "Of course I'm here to listen to you."

"You don't need to do that with your voice," Mark responds, sounding half-amused.  Mark's never been the kind of person you can pull that on, even at what has to be her most vulnerable.  "But thanks.  I, um.  I don't know how to say this."

"The only other languages you know relate to computers and I don't understand C++ or binary, Mark, so you're gonna have to use English."  She's a little impatient, okay.  Mark calling her like this is kind of a big deal.  They weren't ever girly-girl roommates, apart from that one memorable time she'd wrestled Mark down to give her a makeover.  (The look on Eduardo's face had been so, so worth it.  Blow-dryers can perform a wonderful public service.)

"Yeah, no, I know, I just-- it's weird saying it."

Chris's head drops forward.  "Please tell me you're not on drugs.  Or having sex with my boyfriend.  Or having sex with Sean Parker, cause for that one I might actually kill you. As both your friend and your spokesperson."

"God no," Mark says, sounding appropriately horrified.  "I would never-- I've only slept with Wardo, you _know_ that."

"Okay."  She takes a breath.  "What is it?"

"I'm pregnant."

 _What the fuck._

Chris says the first thing she can.  "Shit."  And wait, that's not right.  She needs to come up with something else to say, something better-- "are you okay?"

Mark's breathing is uneven too, she can hear it.  "Yeah."

"How far along are you?"

"Since June," Marks says.  Chris counts in her head.  Now it's September.  17 weeks if she's doing the math right.

"You're going to run out of time, Mark.  If you want to end it.  You're running out of time."

"I can't," Mark says.  "Not yet.  I'm not-- I can't make that decision by myself."

"It's good that you know that," Chris says encouragingly, even though that's the last thing she personally would do if she was in Mark's situation.  "When can you talk to Eduardo about this?  You need to, sweetie.  Before the week is over."

"You _really_ don't have to call me that," Mark says with more than a trace of dryness.  "Seriously, it's fine.  And I can't talk to him."

"He deserves to know.  To decide.  You know."

"No, I'm-- my lawyers don't want me to talk to him, like even to say hello.  And he's blocked my phone number.  And my email.  I think his lawyers told him to do that, that's the kind of people they are."

"Shit," Chris says again.  "I'm so sorry."

This is _not_ what she expected.  And Mark, oh god, _Mark_ with a baby.  And Mark's only twenty.  If she was Mark she would be scared out of her mind.

"I, uh, Chris."

"Yeah?"

"Don't tell anyone this, except, I-- I don't know what to _do_."

And it's not like she has some snappy motivational speech planned for that, so.

-

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: did you hear

Did you hear about Mark?

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: Re: did you hear

If this is about the lawsuit(s) then I am breaking up with you

PS please tell me you are coming out here over Columbus Day break she is driving me insane(-er)

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: your love affair with parenthesis worries me

No, you jackass, I'm talking about the baby.

PS the news of your insanity does not surprise me. and yes.

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: jackass is a term of endearment, right?

if this is another Facebook-as-baby metaphor, I would have you know that those are getting really annoying, it is as annoying to me as it is to you that your birth name is Christianna.

PS thank GOD.  

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: FUCK

I thought she would have told you.

I mean an actual flesh and blood baby.

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: Fuck^100

A _baby_ baby.  holy shit.

The lawyers are going to kill her.  This is going to get so much worse.  There's going to be so much more shit now.

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: you forgot about the press

And Eduardo.

PS thinking about it, does it make sense for me to come out there Friday night?  It's not like I can't do class work on the plane.

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: I hate everything

Oh god she has to tell him.  Or start wearing a marquee to the hearings when she starts to show.

PS I truly love you. I'll do the flight stuff and send you the deets.

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: who says deets anymore?

Okay.  We'll talk more when I get to CA.  

-

"Lunch," Sy announces, when the yelling starts.  "Come back in two hours everyone, okay?"

As is his habit, established in the short amount of time this has been going on, Eduardo storms out without looking at her.  Mark thinks it's fine, brushes him off.  She should get some coffee and code, she's so fucking tired.  Was sick all last night.  And right, she can't have coffee, damn it to hell.

Maybe she can splash some water on her face.  That would definitely help, the shock to her system.  Stay awake until she can get back to the offices and cajole Dustin into making her tea, or ordering takeout, or going to a CVS and buying a Snickers bar.  She never gets lunch at these things; they take up too much of her time already.

She turns around to find a female, and alights on one from her legal team.  "Hi.  Where's the ladies' room?"

"I'll walk you there," the woman says.  "I don't know if you've ever caught my name-- I'm Marylin Delpy.  I'm helping out Sy."

"Yeah.  Thanks."  Mark's definitely grateful that she was saved the embarrassment of having to ask.  "So are you enjoying yourself?"

"I'm sorry?"  Marylin peers at Mark.  She has very swishy hair and an impeccable suit, and while it's not like Mark cares about that, she's wearing an old Harvard sweatshirt and a skirt that the lawyers forced her into for appearances, but it makes her feel annoyed.  They tried to make her take off the hoodie, but there's no way that's happening.  Not where everyone else can see her.

"Are you enjoying the case?"

"I'm not sure what you mean," Marylin says gently.  

"Well it's a rather big deal, the co-founder of Facebook suing the founder, so it's a really juicy opportunity for you.  Something to put on your resume, you know-- and I've always suspected that lawyers don't have souls," Mark says.  Marylin's eyebrows raise.

"That was kind of a low blow," she comments.  "I'm on your side, Mark."

"Because I'm paying you."

"Yes, but-- it's obvious that you're not a supervillain.  Whenever I hear emotional testimony-- look, I assume that 85 percent of it is exaggerated and the remaining 15 percent is perjury."

"But a jury won't know that."

Marylin nods.  

"Okay," Mark says, and opens the bathroom door.

Marylin goes into a stall, and Mark leans over the sink to splash some water on her face.  It's cold and bracing and good, except when she tilts her arms up some of the water cupped in her hand slides down her hoodie sleeve.

"Fuck," she mutters, and peels it off.  Maybe she can stick it under the hand dryer so that her sleeve won't be damp for the rest of the afternoon.

There's a sound as Marylin unlocks the stall, running her hands through her hair.  When she looks up to check herself in the mirror, there's then a silence.

It doesn't last long enough.

"Mark?" Marylin says, looking at Mark's abdomen in the mirror.  "What's going on here?"

And because it isn't her day, because it isn't her _week_ , at that moment Eduardo's lawyer Gretchen walks in.

-

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: hell and damnation

do you know what happened at the deposition today?

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: Re: hell and damnation

I'm guessing it's not anything good.

Mark told someone to fuck off? Cause I can see that happening.  Mark fainted because she eats like a five-year-old let loose in a candy shop without supervision?

Also, packed for leaving tomorrow.

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: Re: hell and damnation

I wish.

As of a few hours ago, Eduardo is now informed of his impending fatherhood.  So are his lawyers.  So are Mark's lawyers.

She's so shocked, I think that is the word I'm looking for, that she wasn't even mad at me for knowing about it or you for telling me.

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: capitalization means things are serious

Holy fucking hell, Dustin.  Can you change my flight to tonight?

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: Re: hell and damnation

Done.  You get in around midnight-- see you in seven hours at SFO, assuming you don't have any checked baggage.  I'm going to try to get Mark to eat now, and once this shit gets solved (they are messes without us omg) we can have a reunion.  And by that I mean sex.

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: Re: hell and damnation

Tell me if anything happens up until we take off.  I mean it.

Your intent was pretty clear there.  But you know that, and I'm leaving now.

Seriously what is our life.

-

"Mark," Gretchen says, once they're back from lunch.  "I would like for you to define the relationship between you and my client."

Like a tic, Mark glances at Sy.  He nods cautiously.  Marylin's eyes are huge.  Someone needs to talk to her about keeping a poker face if she's going to keep being a lawyer, especially one who has to get up in a courtroom in front of sharks.

It's going to be a train wreck in slow-motion, Mark can tell that much.

"We were friends," she says.  And that's true.  That's not perjuring herself right there.  Wardo never officially asked her out.

-

Mark thinks it's totally unfair that Dustin and Eduardo have a suite while she and Chris are crammed into this tiny little room.  Chris keeps telling her that they only have the suite because their third roommate was arrested for auto theft, but it's still a pretty fucking ideal situation, even considering all the police drama and both guys having to testify (and in Dustin's case, having to put on pants for the first time in almost a week and a half).

Anyways, the good thing about Chris and Dustin being this ridiculously couple-y couple is that she can hang out in their room all the time.  Chris has a thing about fooling around in the suite, cause it _does_ kinda smell like guy-sweat and socks, so whenever Mark is sexiled she just bunks with Eduardo.

It's a weird basis for a friendship, like, I only see you when our friends are banging in full view of my Buffy poster or whatever.  But Giles wouldn't judge, so Mark won't either.

They get into a rhythm.  Eduardo's a nice person and she's liked him since orientation, when Chris staggered up clutching onto Dustin in ridiculous heels and shoved Wardo at her, mumbling sloppily about roommates getting to know each other cause she and Dustin were going to get to _know_ each other if you know what I mean.  And it had been awkward when they were eighteen and knew nothing, but it got way better.

She codes a lot, Eduardo reads econ textbooks and tries to teach her Portuguese, even though Mark is only interested in learning curse words, though he manages to get her to remember 'obrigado'.  They watch bad TV together sometimes and drink beer.  One night he manages to weasel out of her what her birth name is.  (She's pretty sure that's why Harvard matched her and Chris as roommates, based on their embarrassing given names.  Not that Marianna Eleanora is a _bad_ name-- certainly not as bad as Christianna Maelyssa-- but it kind of sucks when all you want to be known as is Mark and you sound like a fairytale princess or some shit).  

Life continues on and Dustin and Chris stay together, which is both weird and awesome, and somehow Eduardo becomes her actual best friend.  She has a horrid fight with Erica Albright, who had been the only person she'd liked from her high school to end up in Boston, and Chris stays lovely but also gets even more couple-y, and things just... spiral.

And when she and Eduardo have sex for the first time (on his bed, econ textbook kicked carelessly to the floor, laptop placed more carefully on the bedside table, blue light casting shadows over their bodies in lieu of the moon) it's kind of awesome.  It seems like something that could be good.

-

"You were friends," Gretchen repeats.  "I was under the impression that you were once a couple."

Mark turns her head to stare at Eduardo.  He looks-- uncomfortable?  Which is odd, because he seems to perfectly content to air out all the rest of their dirty laundry and get his money's worth for it.

"He never asked me out," she says.  "And we never really told anyone what was going on with us."

"Dustin Moscovitz and Christianna Hughes have both testified that they knew about your romantic relationship."

"We never explicitly told them," Mark responds.  And that's true, that's not lying in the least.  They hadn't told Dustin and Chris as much as Dustin and Chris has walked in on them.  Gretchen glances at Eduardo and receives a tiny little nod in return; good for her.  It had been her idea that they never officially be a couple, she had muttered something about expectations and not wanting anything to change, and while it was pretty obvious that Eduardo wanted to go out to Harvard Yard with a sign that said _Mark's my girlfriend!!!!_ he had agreed, albeit with a somewhat discontented look on his face.

"And the nature of this relationship-- _friendship_ , if you will.  Was it sexual?"

Eduardo takes a sharp breath, disbelief on his face for the first time all day.

 _You're going too far,_ Mark thinks.  _This isn't going to end up how you want it too.  It'd better not._

"Yes," she says.  "It was sexual in nature."

Gretchen looks-- well, Mark can't read the intricacies of her expression but she knows she doesn't like it, cause Gretchen knows she has something good and it's going to result in a win for her side.  "And when was the last time you were intimate?"

"You _don't_ need to answer that--" Sy hisses, looking royally ticked off.  "That's an invasion of my client's privacy--"

"It is _relevant_ ," the other lawyer says.  "Mark?"

"June this year.  Before the dilution of the shares and our fight, obviously."  Mark's voice is wooden.  "Early in the month."

"And--"

Mark stands up and takes off her sweatshirt.  She's skinny, she's going to be showing even though the baby isn't that big yet.  There isn't really a baby bump, there's more of a decidedly pronounved curve to an abdomen that used to be flat.  She looked it up on the internet a few nights ago, apparently the baby's the size of a turnip or something.  She's still not quite sure why fetuses are measured by comparing them to vegetables.

"And this is the result.  And you know what else, fuck you.  Looks like it's your lawyer who's the asshole, Wardo."

She barely makes it across the hall before she throws up in a wastebasket.

-

Mark peels off her hoodie and pulls off her top once she gets to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.  It's so hot in the room, there's no airflow, and her skin feels so tight.  She stares at herself in the mirror and sees a lot of pale skin broken up by the contours of an ugly navy-blue bra, curly hair, and purple bruises under her eyes from lack of sleep.  The belly sticks out like a ripening pumpkin, totally out of place on her frame.

She's always hated pumpkins.

"Mark."

She knows that voice, and she freezes.

"Mark?"

There's a hand on her shoulder and she automatically tenses up at the pressure, a painful reflex that she never used to have.

"You're not supposed to be speaking me with me.  I'm not supposed to speaking with you, for that matter."

"Yes, well, let's ignore the lawyers for five minutes," Eduardo says.  "I think it is obvious that they've done enough.  Can you face me please?"  

She can't.  Not because she can't see him right now-- his dark eyes are boring a hole in the mirror-- but because looking at him without the protective glass would be so much worse, to face that pain and anger straight on.

"You, um--" Eduardo's voice is faltering a little.  "You're pregnant.  You're _still_ pregnant."

"Yeah, that's pretty fucking obvious-- I mean yes.  I am."

She sees him take a deep breath and feels it too, since he's so close to her.  Closer than he's been in months, actually, and she has to tell herself that she can't relax into him, that he is not there for her comfort anymore.

"Why?"

Mark turns to face him.  "It didn't seem fair to make that kind of decision without the input from the father."

Sean was never even a possibility, you dickwad, and thanks to your lawyers for having fun with those sordid recriminations.  Eduardo seems to get that at the same moment she thinks it and his eyes widen.  

"I haven't ever had sex with anyone else but you," Mark continues quietly.  "So that eliminates all other possibilities."

"Ah. Yes.  Okay."  Wardo scrubs a hand over his face.  "How were you going to wait for me if our lawyers aren't allowing us to talk to each other?"

"It wasn't the most logical decision I've ever made."  His eyes darken a little at that,  clearly wanting to rebut, except that Mark can't go on with this any longer.  She gets rid of him the best way that she knows how. "This is the ladies' room, Eduardo.  You're not supposed to be in here."

With that remark they're headed back to anger.  Even she can see that, and right now, she really doesn't want any more confrontation.

"I'm leaving," Mark says, stepping smartly around him.  "You probably still have my contact information.  If you don't, and you still for whatever reason want to talk to me, your legal team can get it for you."

-

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: shit, fans, and other things

Okay, so I finally got Mark to sleep.  And I got her to eat something too, but while she ate the pasta that I made, it was sticky and kind of gross.  You better be here in the morning, you're the only one of us who knows how to cook.  (Tell your nana I love her for teaching you all that).

I had to take a cab from the airport all by myself, for your information.  It was very sad.

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: hi

Why are you emailing me when we both have cell phones and I would like to hear your lovely voice?

Sorry about not meeting you, I was dealing with fallout from this afternoon at the office.

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: Re: hi

Because Mark is asleep in my bed in the guestroom and I don't want her to wake up.  And it would be weird to sleep in her room tonight.

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: Re: hi

Okay, but you guys were roomies.  How was that weird?

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: Re: hi

It just is, her house is so lonely, also she is using my shoulder as a pillow.  Anyways tell me about what happened with Eduardo today, Mark was a little angry and upset and freaked out, so it was hard to get the whole thing.

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: what I know

From what I can tell, Mark was in the bathroom, took off her hoodie, Wardo's lawyer walked in and saw she's knocked up (and yeah, it's getting to be obvious, I can't believe I didn't notice it before).  They get back from break and the lawyer starts questioning Mark about her and Eduardo's relationship and if it was sexual in nature, which obviously it was (remember college? ohyeah).  Then she asked about the last time they fucked, heard it was June, and was going to keep on asking these questions when Mark stood off, took off her hoodie, and was like "and this is what happened, fuck you bitchsicle."

Then she ran out and I think Wardo found her but I dunno what happened with that.

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: bitchsicle?

I feel like that's probably the worst way that whole thing could have happened.  That's all she told you?

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: it's some fucked-up shit, m'dear

No, that's what the person from her legal team who brought her to the Facebook offices after the meeting broke down told me.  I'm finishing up what Mark gave me here, by the way, want me to stop by?

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: it's not the time to be cavalier

Dustin, it's 3 AM.  Which means for me it is actually 6 AM and I didn't sleep on the plane at all.  I am going to crash in about ten minutes.  Come by whenever Mark calls you to talk about some Facebook problem and we can go from there, okay?  Someone needs to get her to eat breakfast.

This is _exhausting_.

See you.

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: gallows humor though

Love you too.  

We need new friends.

(Only problem is I like the old ones.)

-

Mark has begun having the strangest dreams since she's started sleeping alone.  They're faded in nature, featuring versions of Eduardo and her that are them but then aren't.  There's her and Eduardo after her fight with Erica Albright about how she was such a lousy friend, Mark figuring out ways to hurt her  and prove why she was bad to have as an enemy and then Eduardo, going along with it because he wanted to be around her.  She couldn't see it then but she can see it now, mostly asleep on Chris's shoulder.  She sees him watching her hack into the facebooks of all the other houses, aglow at her skill.  She never quite realized how much she impressed him, and she should have told him more how he impressed her-- three hundred thousand dollars from _watching the weather_ , and in her dreams she tells him that, and in her dreams he looks surprised.

When she wakes up, Chris is gone, the bed is mostly cold and she is wrapped in freezing sheets, and there are noises downstairs.  
   
-

Eduardo rings the doorbell at seven AM the next morning, Dustin in tow.

"I did not bring him willingly," Dustin announces when Chris opens the door in one of Dustin's old t-shirts and a pair of his old basketball shorts.  "We converged.  And I _knew_ that you stole those shorts, you thief.  There is _no such thing_ as a mischievious clothing elf."

"You don't care," Chris says, yawning.  "You bastards woke me up.  You do know that you only need to ring the doorbell once, right?"

"Is--"

"Mark's still asleep, despite your aggressive ringing," Chris responds.  "So I guess I'll make breakfast then.  Why the hell are you up so early?"

"The lawyers called me to see if I could tell Mark that the deposition was rescheduled for some time next week," Dustin says.  "I don't know about Wardo, I only saw him two minutes ago.  The phone probably rang here too."

"If it did, neither of us heard it.  But the landline's in the bedroom and we were both in the guest room last night, so that would probably explain it."

"What?" That's the first thing that Eduardo says to her.  And hello to you too Eduardo, Chris thinks, mentally rolling her eyes. "Why were you both in the guest room?"

"Cause Mark fell asleep right on top of me."  Chris holds the door open and gestures for them to enter.  "Be quiet.  She was even more exhausted than I was, and I hadn't slept for thirty hours.  You couldn't manage to get me bumped up to business class, Dustin?  Economy was so crammed, it was like we were cattle."

"She never eats properly," Eduardo interjects.  Chris fixes him with a glare and ushers them into the kitchen, digging up the ingredients for eggs on toast.

"I think there's ketchup in the cupboard under the sink," Dustin says, sinking down into a chair.  "And hey.  Hi, Christi.  Lovely to finally see your beautiful face in person."

"Good to see you too," she smiles, grabbing the ketchup from its place next to the cleaning supplies.  "And you as well Wardo.  It would be nicer if it was under better circumstances, but I guess we're all kind of stuck right now."

"I suppose," Eduardo's response is somewhat reluctant.  "How is Mark?"

"Nauseous, asleep, and freaked out as all hell," Chris says succinctly.  "And yourself?"

"Two out of the three are the same for me," he concedes.  "I was not expecting this to happen when I sued.  I was expecting-- retribution.  A settlement.  You know?"

"I don't want to get into this now," Dustin interrupts.  "This is so not the time for us to choose sides between the two of you in your custody battle."

"Eh...okay," Eduardo agrees, after a moment reflecting on the truly awkward metaphor.  Chris shakes her head in the direction of the two and puts a pat of butter into the frying pan, watching it sizzle and brown.

"Hey," she says, as if the thought has just struck her.  "How do you feel about this whole thing, Wardo?"

He doesn't answer.  There's a shift in the room, almost imperceptibly, and they all turn towards the sound of footsteps.

"I heard voices," Mark says, clad in pajamas that Chris is ninety percent sure were a joke Hanukkah gift from one of her brothers.  They're flannel and have cows printed on them.  The only saving grace-- and the reason that they're not at a Salvation Army somewhere-- that they're loose and soft and Mark wouldn't have wanted to go out to get new ones when her old pair of sweats fell apart at the seams.

"You should still be asleep," Chris chides.  "It isn't good for you to sleep only four hours in a row, especially with your, uh, condition, and you've been doing that for way too long."

Mark ignores her.  "Are you making eggs?" she asks.  

"Not really," Chris mutters.  "I just burned the butter.  I don't even know why I'm cooking; Dustin, you're better at this than I am."

"This is true," he agrees, and hops up to help her.  Mark focuses her attention on Eduardo, gives him one of those dead-eyed stares that she's perfected during the time she's been in depositions and mediations.

"What are you doing here?" She demands.  "Do your lawyers know that you're here?"

"It's not all about the lawyers," Eduardo replies.  "We didn't get to talk yesterday.  I wanted to do so.  That's all."

" _Awk_ -ward," Dustin sing-songs in Chris's ear.   She smacks his arm.

"Shut up and cook so that we can eavesdrop on them."

-

Here's the thing,  Intellectually, Mark knows that she doesn't need him.  Certainly not for financial support, and while it was nice to have someone looking after her, she doesn't necessarily like that people do.  It's merely that Eduardo did it and she let him.  There's a difference between the two, really there is.  

It's just hard to remember that when he's standing across from her, looking for all the world like a hurt deer.

"What do you want to talk about?" Mark demands.  Eduardo merely raises an eyebrow, letting his gaze flick down to her protruding, cow-printed stomach.

She resists the urge to cross her arms firmly over it.  

"How long?" Eduardo asks.

"How long for what?"

"How long have you _known_?"

She clears her throat and takes to moment to admire the lines of his shoulders, so tightly clenched and tense under his dress shirt.  She has that effect on him, she thinks, and it is both a chilling and interesting thought.  "Since early July.  I had suspected since the end of June, but I didn't go to a doctor until July 4th weekend."

"Holy _shit_ , Mark.  So when in June, at the Facebook offices--"

Mark gazes at him levelly.  "I had been wondering if I should approach you then with my suspicions, yes, but I had no real facts to go on, just a feeling.  Obviously it was impossible after the scene where you broke my laptop, and by then I felt like we had broken down enough that a civil conversation wouldn't have been possible."  _Plus you hung up on me twice and then blocked my number and email, and I couldn't hack my way through to you for once in my life._

"Shit," Eduardo breathes out again.  "If I had known--"

"--I doubt anything would have changed," Mark finishes.  "You would still be angry with me.  In fact, unless I am grossly misreading the situation, you still _are_ angry with me."

At the stove, trying to keep the eggs from burning, Dustin rolls his eyes.  _You idiot._   Chris elbows him in the ribcage, obviously having the same thought.  Though if he knows her well enough, she's probably thinking that both of them are idiots, which is arguably true.  Dustin could certainly make a case for it.

Taking advantage of Eduardo's muteness, Mark steamrollers on.  "I was going to name her Ada."

"Ada?" Eduardo asks.  "Wait a moment, her?"

"They had some more advanced ultrasound technology at the ob/gyn office and I found out last week that the baby is probably a girl, yes.  Though science hasn't advanced to the point where they're one hundred percent positive, I'll have to wait for the amniocentesis."

" _Mark_.  You don't just tell people things like that, all causal and off-the-cuff.  That's not what you _do_ , okay?."

"Exactly none of this has been orthodox, _Eduardo_.  Except for maybe the conception."

Chris makes an annoyed sound and decides to save both of them from tearing apart even further.

"It's seven in the morning, you guys.  Mark needs to sleep more, and so should I.  I don't know about Wardo and Dustin, but it's foggy and cold outside and not exactly inviting.  Why don't we all eat something and then figure out stuff from there?"  By this she means _I will lock you two in a room and remove all sharp objects while Dustin takes me out on a date for food cooked by other people, but they don't have to know that._

"Fine," Eduardo mutters.  Mark nods her assent.

There is much stabbing of eggs.  

-

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: work

Work is super awkward today.  Also if I punch Sean Parker in the face do not blame me and bail me out, por favor y gracias.

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: spanish?  really?  
   
No one would blame you.  Except the police, but that could be a problem and there are already enough lawyers hanging around.  Anyways, at least you aren't stuck at lunch with Eduardo getting the third degree about everything Mark has done since June.

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: fine

You have it worse.  Hey, why are we emailing and not texting?

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: I don't know, we have more than 160 characters in email?

Pity me.  I can't take this much longer.  "Did she ever say anything to you before two days ago?" "Why is she keeping the baby?" "Is it bad for the baby that I'm suing its mother?" "How does she feel about it? And me?"

It is the Markuardo drama train and we are only the passengers, considering how long this lawsuit could go on if he decides to keep going with the whole thing.  I can't even deal with the PR shit right now. Their baby is going to have affidavits for bedtime stories.

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject:  DUDE

He totally still loves her.  This is a fucking revelation.

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: I am not a dude

Dustin he is SUING her for MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

Fuck, wardo's here and he's pissed im on phone have to make nice see you later - C.

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: but but but

Do you not know that love conquers all?  That is what Disney taught us and it will not lead us astray.

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: why am I dating you

You have issues.

-

"Soooooo," Dustin says, stopping by Mark's office after lunch while she's attempting to code for the new update.  "Hi."

Mark doesn't even look up from the screen.  "What do you want, Dustin."

"Is that a question or a statement?" her friend asks.  Mark is seriously considering demoting him from a friendship-position, except then she'd really only have Chris left and despite how much Chris rolls her eyes about Dustin she's crazy in love with him, so if she followed Dustin on his demoted road trip back to the East Coast and then Mark would only have Crazy Jerry in development left-- time to stop thinking, okay.

"Both."  Mark spins around in her office chair and then regrets it, because now her stomach is doing the tango.  "Hi.  What?"

"I want to go home," Dustin says.  

Mark narrows her eyes.  "Why?  It's one in the afternoon and I'm pretty sure you still have work to do, because I still have work to do."

He holds up a hand, puts out two fingers.  "You always have work, Mark, and if there isn't any then you go ahead and create some.  Anyways, there are two reasons.  One, Sean is being a dick."

"Sean is always a dick, Dustin, that's why we send him away whenever we can," Mark interrupts.  "Usually under supervision."

"He is insinuating things about you," Dustin continues, "and I would very much like to punch him but I am aware that I cannot for the good of the company, and also I do _not_ want to deal with criminal assault charges at the moment."

"I'm glad you paid attention to HR when they made that presentation."  
   
"And two-- _two_ , my girlfriend is here and I very much need to swish away to rescue her from her horrific lunch date with your baby-daddy."

Mark considers chucking her USB mouse at his head, except Dustin is clearly beaming about his word choice.  "Because I thought that ex-best-friend was a bit of a mouthful, and young master plaintiff is too formal and doesn't cover enough ground, and then I was reading Us Weekly this morning and ergo!  Baby daddy!"

"I can fire you," Mark says, weighing the mouse in her hand.  It's sadly light, but when she bought it she hadn't been considering its effectiveness as a projectile weapon. She won't even ask what Eduardo's talking to Chris about, just knows that he'll get enough stuff out of her friend that he'll still be mad at her, which is fine because then she can still be mad at him.  And then there doesn't need to be talking.  "You are replaceable."

"You would never replace me.  I am a shining beacon in your C++ existence."  Dustin comes over to hug her around the shoulders, the most he can get away with.  "Chris and I will get you when it's time for dinner."

"That joke doesn't make sense, also, not hungry."

"You will be.  And now I must away; my lovely lady awaits."

"You are a beacon of bad things to the English language!" she shouts after him, but he just waves and hurries to the elevator.

-

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: you are a ridiculous human being

and dinner tonight needs to be at 8:30 or 9, not 6.

To: mark@facebook.com  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: I knew you would crack

I will be making grilled zucchini, brown rice with kale, and roasted potatoes with rosemary, with brown butter cake for dessert and you will eat some of everything because according to an article I saw in Parenting magazine kale is good for knocked up ladies. also you are buying the food in exchange for me not purposefully blowing up your kitchen.

now leave me alone so I can have sex with my girlfriend.

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: wait

aren't you meeting Chris with Eduardo right now or something?

(I will ignore that you read Parenting magazine, but only for now).

To: mark@facebook.com  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: i am a ninja

I have plans to lure her into a restroom.

(noted and appreciated)

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: oh god

never speak to me again please.

To: mark@facebook.com  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: you know you love me

will you forgive me if we leave wardo with the check?  

and it's not like we never heard your loud sex noises back at college, you know.

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: maybe

This conversation is over.

-

"Yo, bitches."

"Dustin," Eduardo grinds out, "you have a bad habit of popping up places unexpectedly."

"Yeah," Dustin grins, leaning over to kiss Chris on the cheek, "it's one of my charms."

Clearly Eduardo doesn't notice how relieved Chris is that a third party has appeared, because he mostly just looks pissed.  He's making what Dustin used to call the angry rabbit face back at Harvard, and it all usually worked out back then because Wardo would make the face, Dustin would make the comment and get smacked upside the head, and then everything would be more or less okay.  He misses when it was as easy as that to fix everything, he really does.

Right now, though, Eduardo just looks angry and Chris's eyebrows are almost at her hairline.

"Hi Dustin," she says, and scoots over in the booth.  Dustin slides in next to her, accidentally kicking Eduardo under the table.  His eyebrows draw together in consternation.  "What's up?"

"Convinced Mark to let me leave early," he says, "and I was hungry.  Are you guys finishing up, or staying for dessert?"

"We were getting ready to go," Eduardo says stiffly, but then Dustin holds up a hand.

"You haven't gotten dessert?  But I have been to this place before and they have cheesecake, Wardo, do you not know the mystical wonders of cheesecake?"

Chris says, "you're strange," but she also flags down the waiter and therefore Dustin will count it as a win.  Except Eduardo's kind of blinking, looking like a fish out of water, and how much time does it take to fall out of a rhythm?  When it was Chris-and-Dustin and Mark-and-Eduardo shifting into and out of Chris-Dustin-Mark-Eduardo, they were always fine then, but it's only been four months since everything really fell apart, and now all their strings are loose and that magic that made them work, whatever it was, that thing is totally gone, like dissolved Elmer's glue from pre-k.

(A lot of his exuberance is faked right now; it's stressful keeping track of what's going on and who is mad at who).

"Is Mark at work?" Eduardo asks, quite abruptly.  Chris is giving their orders to the waiter, asking for a pot of coffee too because she's brilliant like that and also probably really tired from dealing with all of them, and then there's Dustin.

 Dustin is _confused_.

"Yes," he responds, after an appropriate time of casting around for an answer.  "So was I, but then I left to come here."

"How much is Mark at work?"  Eduardo presses on, and Chris's eyes are flicking from side to side like what, what is this, why is this happening now.

So Dustin says it.  "What.  What is this, Wardo, what?"

"How much is _Sean_ at work?" Eduardo asks, ignoring Dustin's very polite inquiry.  Chris sighs, like she's been through this endlessly over the past hour or so.

"Dustin," she says, "what does Mark do at work?"  It's obvious that Eduardo has just been disregarding everything she's said, maybe because it isn't fitting into the pigeonhole he's assigned Mark.  Dustin forgets that Wardo gets tunnel vision sometimes.

"Has her headphones on all the time and codes and occasionally responds to my emails when they get irritating enough or when I put dancing gifs in them.  Also, sometimes when it's absolutely necessary we drag her to meetings and hope that she won't piss off the people she needs to be nice to.  And it's gotten worse since you came and-- since June, but I guess that's partially attributed to hormones, so maybe I'll have to forgive her for that," he responds promptly.

"What does Sean do at work?"  Eduardo infuses the word Sean with a particular type of loathing.  Dustin is impressed.

"He owns 7 percent of the company," Dustin says, "that's what happened in the end.  He's not around much."  He doesn't add _because I discouraged him from doing so_ , even though it's totally the truth (and Mark doesn't know that yet either, so let's not tell him).  "I think he might be in Panama right now."

"That's more than I own," Eduardo says, and Dustin has to inject with a _currently_ because lawsuits can be effective in changing that kind of thing.

"At least you're not, like, exiled away because you have fucked-up behavior and paranoia," Dustin is trying to be helpful, but he has been sick of this for a really long time, and it's been so much extensive than it feels.  It is also taking a very long time for their cheesecake to come, but that's totally beside the point.

He really wants that cheesecake.  Something has to make coming out here worth it (besides haunting the depths of Mark's brain forever and ever, but that's always just been a work perk) and poor Chris is probably traumatized from the intensity of Eduardo's _emotions_.

"Fucked-up behavior and paranoia?" Wardo repeats, and Dustin is nodding sycophantically before he realizes that it might be better to stop.

Instead he says, "you probably should have punched him while you had the chance," and though that won't fix everything, Eduardo's shoulders do seem to relax.

"I'm glad that's out there," Chris says in that half-sarcastic and half-entirely-serious way of hers.  Dustin knows she agrees, though she would never condone it.  At that moment, their dessert arrives.  Dustin digs in with fervor.  "Anyways, what I've been attempting to tell you is that I cannot read Mark's mind, Eduardo.  And furthermore, she hasn't told me much.  I do have the benefit of being good friends with her, but that's about it.  She's feeling unsure, she's confused-- she's twenty years old and pregnant, for god's sake, and she's irreconcilably fought with one of the few people who loved her for who she was."

"I didn't think of it like that," Eduardo says.

Dustin shrugs.  "'Course you didn't.  Have a bite of this man, you're missing out."

Eduardo says, "I need to, uh, I really need to go," and jumps out of his seat, throwing some money down on the table.

Chris raises an eyebrow.  "At least he isn't stiffing us on the bill," she offers, before digging in.  

"Yeah, but that was ruder than I would have given him credit for.  It's Wardo.  His super-power is politeness and class."

"Maybe he finally bought a clue," Chris says.  "Or at least I can hope."

"Mmmm.  Maybe."  Dustin considers life for a moment.  "Eduardo is really missing out with this cheesecake," he says, happily forking another bite into his mouth. "It's so creamy.  Ohmygod."

"The effect this dessert has on you is kind of frightening," Chris sighs, "but it is rather good."

"Maybe we'll be nice and bring everyone back some," which is a wonderful idea if Dustin knows anything and clearly he does, because he is a Harvard student, albeit one taking a semester or two off. "Hey, where'd Wardo go, anyways?  Back to his hotel to wallow in baby-daddy angst? Lawyer meeting?"

"I doubt it.  I think he's decided that enough is enough."

Dustin glances up from scavenging up delicious crumbly bits of graham cracker crust. "He and Mark are finally going to talk about their feelings?"

Chris's smile is more than a little wry.  "No, I think he's going to yell at her and see if anything he says sticks."

Dustin's head tilts. "A different strategy than I would have gone with, based on my time observing the subject.  But it could be effective, right?"

"Maybe." Chris sips her coffee, grateful for the caffeine. "I'm not going to get any more involved than this than I already unfortunately am.  It's giving me a headache."

"I know what you mean," Dustin responds.  "Stress headaches, worried headaches, every type of headache imaginable.  And being super cheerful to both of them also makes me want to kill both of them so there's that too, on top of everything else."

"Don't kill anyone, please.  I don't think my parents would approve of my dating a serial killer."

"They already don't like me," Dustin pouts. "So would it make a much of a difference?"

"They don't mind you," Chris says, "it's just that they look at you and all they see is a person who is having sex with their daughter."

Dustin scratches his chin.  "Aha.  It all makes so much more sense now." He points his fork accusingly. "Though I will also add that Mark's mom _loves_ Eduardo and they have done dirty, dirty things to each other."

Chris shrugs. "Maybe if you wore more suits."

The fork does a dramatic figure eight in the air. "Blasphemy!"

-

He is cold.  It isn't the weather-- California in September is lovely-- but inside.  He is cold.

It should be number one on a list of things not to expect: the person who you are suing for millions of dollars is pregnant with your baby.  Eduardo is fairly sure that this kind of thing only happens on bad telenovelas, and even then there is probably much more crying, hatesex and make-up sex, and emphatic declarations, but so far with him and Mark there's just been some shock and quiet anger in a ladies' room.

At least they got the setting right.

It's a really warm day outside.  Mark will be inside, Eduardo knows, eating candy and coding, since there is no one at the office to wrangle her out of the habit otherwise-- Chris and Dustin being gone and Sean being irrelevant.  (He likes that thought much more than he'd care to admit).

His phone buzzes.  It's Chris.

 _don't do anything stupid_  
 _  
i wasn't planning on it,_ he texts back.  He's sure that she and Dustin are both shaking their heads right now and scarfing down cheesecake and talking about him and Mark, or maybe they're making out because they're finally, blissfully alone and away from other people's problems.  

Eduardo's more than a little surprised when no one tries to stop him from entering the Facebook offices-- a good omen, considering that the last time he was there he was escorted out by security.  There aren't many people around but it's lunchtime, when the normal people eat.

Mark is at her desk though, wired in with omnipresent headphones on, hunched over her laptop. The sight of her is so ingrained, so _familiar_ , that it makes his heart hurt a little.  Eduardo walks up to her and takes the headphones off.  It has an instantaneous effect; Mark hits Control+S and turns around.

"What the hell do you think you're-- _oh_.  Eduardo.  What the hell are you _doing_ here?"

"We needed to talk," Eduardo says.  His back is ramrod-straight.  "This is a good time."

Mark turns back to the computer screen.  "Not for me."

"Too bad." He reaches over her shoulder and closes the laptop.  Mark looks indignant.

"You could have ruined--"

"I saw you save it," Eduardo interrupts.  "Where can we go that's quiet and private?"

Mark shrugs mulishly. "Nowhere here, it's too open.  There might be a coffee shop nearby."

"You're not supposed have caffeine when you're pregnant, I'm sure of it."

"They do sell other things there." She pulls on an old, loose sweatshirt over her tank top.  With some surprise, Eduardo realizes that it's one of his from college, one that he had thought went missing at least a year ago.

"Fine," he says.  "Let's go."

The walk there is short and tense.  When they arrive at the cafe, Mark, with a pointed look on her face, orders a chamomile tea and a scone.  Eduardo just gets a coffee.  "So," he says to start, sitting down heavily.

"You're probably not supposed to be here with me."

"Let's just skip past that part of the conversation, Mark, it's getting old."

She takes a sip of the tea, then puts it down and makes a face. She's always hated herbal tea. "Why are we here, Wardo?"

He looks at her directly for maybe the first time since this whole thing started.  Notes the drawn look on her face, notes how she hasn't really gained any weight except what is expected, and all of that is in her belly.   She looks like she's about to collapse, and down in the pit of his stomach, Eduardo feels something that he had thought was hard and compacted beyond repair soften.

"You look pathetic," he points out.

"Okay, fine, but that's not what you came here to say.  I would appreciate it greatly if you just-- said it." Mark picks at her scone, pulls out each and every raisin and stacks them on her place, arranges them in groups according to the Fibonacci sequence even though she is only able to get up to five.

His head is in his hands. "I- I don't know, okay?  I don't know what I want to say.  I should be mad at you.  No, you know what, I am _furious_ with you.  You are my _best friend_ , Mark, and yet you keep all these things from me and you do it all the goddamn _time_."

"Are?" She asks.  "Not were?"

"I can't tell," Eduardo says dully. "I can't fucking _tell_ because you do all this shit to me and I let you, and then I do something about it and it still hurts to look at you!  And if it didn't hurt, I would absolutely despise you."

"But you don't."

"I am so angry it makes me cold."  His voice is quiet.  "But anger is not hatred.  Give me time for it to fester, but I'm not there yet."

She knocks the raisins out of order and starts stacking them in a pyramid.  "It hurts to look at you too.  Across the room in the deposition-- or-- and I have this constant _reminder_ of you with me, all the time, and I can't get away from it because it is _literally_ inside of me.  You can get away from me.  Fuck, you _ran_ away from me.  You left me behind once you stopped understanding.  I can't ever do that again now because of a fetus that's fifty percent you and fifty percent me because one day she's going to want to know about her goddamn _father_."

Eduardo's eyes stay steady.  "No, it was you who abandoned me, Mark.  There's no rewriting history."

"You froze the account."

"You set up meetings without me!"

"So maybe it wasn't just me and maybe it wasn't just you, okay, maybe we _both_ made a whole fucking mess of everything."  Mark's starting to breathe heavily, and she can feel a knot of anger forming below her breastbone.  And this-- this is good, this is _awesome_ , because she hasn't been pissed off at him like this yet, hasn't felt that ice-cold rage that allows her to forget the soft memories she has from less than a year ago, still painful and fresh and carrying a misty sheen.  "I told you, Wardo!  I told you I needed you, I said that I _needed_ my CFO--"

"And then you fucked Sean Parker and as an _extra special bonus_ you fucked me out of my own company!"  He stands up, the chair making a sharp noise as it teeters backwards and falls, hard.  "I don't think that you needed me so much _then_ , did you Mark?  Once Sean came along and seduced you with visions of this _thing_ that I was apparently preventing you from?"

She stands up too.  Eduardo's too tall for her to be on an equal eye-level, but Mark's had some practice this last few months of making herself look taller than she is, and throws her shoulders back and brings her chin up.  "I _never_ had sex with Sean," she hisses, "and can you get that through your jealous fucking head?  I told you that.  I thought it was established and if not, I will say it under oath.  And if your lawyers want me to prove it once and for all, there can be a paternity test.  I meant it when I said that I needed you, Wardo.  I may not need you now, but I certainly did then.  And whatever I might have done, you fucked _me_ over too."

"You don't have the right to call me Wardo any more," he says, and stalks out of the cafe, leaving her with the check.

-

To: mark@facebook.com  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
CC: esaverin@gmail.com  
BCC: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: you guys are fucking idiots

You guys are fucking idiots.

-Dustin

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: go away

you're not helping

To: mark@facebook.com  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: when has telling me that ever worked?

yes i am

To:  dmosk@facebook.com  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: fuck you

I know you're back in the office by now so get back to actually doing your goddamn job

To: mark@facebook.com  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: work

you are creating a very hostile work environment and I do not appreciate it.

To:  dmosk@facebook.com  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: i don't care

I don't care

-your boss

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: esaverin@gmail.com  
Subject: Re: you guys are fucking idiots

That's obvious, asshole.

To: esaverin@gmail.com  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: asshole?  really?

nah, it's you and Mark who are the assholes.  I'm just a concerned (and very very very pissed off) friend.

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: esaverin@gmail.com  
Subject: yes, asshole

seriously Dustin, stay out of this.  It is between Mark and me and our lawyers now.

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: our friends

I have had it up to HERE with them and here is a place very very far away beyond the sun, accessible only by a super-awesome rocket ship.

Can we lock them in a room together and not let them out

please

please

pleasepleaseplease

-

Eduardo was always tender with her.  He was gentler than she thought she deserved, soft and caring and fucking _tender_ , and his anger now is in such sharp contrast that Mark doesn't know what to do with it.

It would be something as simple as sitting on a bed in Kirkland studying together, leaning into each other until they were melting out of themselves, but Eduardo would always be doing something-- stroking circles on her ankle, tapping out a beat on her calf-- that would bring her back to herself, and so she never minded the contact at all.

Now he looks at her with so much disbelief, like he can't believe that ever happened, like memories of touch and falling asleep on each other and not even caring about waking up with stiff necks, like all of those are nothing to him.

And Mark wants to keep the field level, so Mark plays along.

-

Dustin is still at work.  And yes, Chris knows that it's because he took off around lunchtime to see her, but Dustin is at work, Mark is with her here, and there's something a little backwards about that, isn't there.

It's also because Mark is clearly in distress.  Chris has known Mark for a while now, and usually she's-- controlled.  Calm.  Not robotic, because Mark does feel things, but usually they're hidden pretty deeply away so that she won't get distracted.  She saves her words for when they're necessary, saves her emotions until she has time for them.

"We can't talk to each other," Mark says.  She's curled into a ball on what is nominally Chris's bed, head pressed to her knees.  "Every time we try we end up screaming and furthermore we keeping fighting in public, which the company can't--"

"Okay," Chris says, "Mark--"

Her head tilts up.  "And it's not that I don't want to talk to him, I do, because there are things he needs to _know_."  Mark's leaning into her now and it's more like she's comforting her six-year-old cousin, not her twenty-year-old genius friend.

"And you tell him, and then he gets upset," Chris confirms.  Mark nods.

"Yeah."

A sigh.  "Right, okay, I'll just ask it.  Mark, not only _what_ are you trying to tell him, but _how_?"

Mark blinks.  "The truth."

"Your truth, or _the_ truth?"

"Either.  Both."  Mark shrugs.  "Everything looks bad from his side of it.  I got really angry, earlier.  It felt good."

"That isn't constructive," Chris feels the need to point out.

"It was then," Mark responds.  "But then I told him that I won't ever be able to forget him even if I try, and I think that upset him the most, like, he didn't _want_ me to forget him as much as he's trying to forget me?"

"Again, what exactly did you say?"  Chris pulls Mark a little closer, and she closes her eyes.  

"I said that he ran away from me first.  And I said that I couldn't do the same because I had this reminder of him, half him and half me, and it was inside me and I won't ever get away from it for the rest of my life."

"You said a lot of things that probably hurt there," Chris says.  "Look, this might be crazy, you can laugh at me for suggesting it if you want-- but why don't you just apologize?"

Mark looks up at her.  "I deserve an apology too," she says.  "I actually did say that much, that it was both of us."

"Maybe he doesn't want to acknowledge that yet."

"He should."

"Don't be purposefully obtuse, I know exactly how smart you are." Chris pushes her hair back behind her ears.  "If you say sorry-- if you give an inch-- he might give you two."

-

Once upon a time, back at Harvard when they were first falling into being them, Eduardo recited poetry to her.

Mark knows that he picked it up from Chris, who was reading her way through Harvard's Intro to English Lit classes and therefore constantly leaving books lying around, but it doesn't change the fact that yeah, Eduardo once recited to her a _Byronic love poem_.

Mark had blinked and told him she would understand it better in binary, and that had startled a laugh out of him.  And then she had followed it up with a quote from _Measure for Measure_ (which she now knows thanks to Chris is one of Shakespeare's "problem plays" and was first performed in 1604; midterms were driving her friend batshit insane), telling Eduardo "you are ever precise in promise-keeping", and then he had said _I love you_ once he thought she had fallen asleep.

She hadn't, and she didn't tell him that she could hear him, but she thought that the next morning, when she had touched his shoulder and looked down at him, soft and unguarded, that he might have known anyways and didn't really care.

-

To: esaverin@gmail.com  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: byron

Once you told me that I was all that's best of dark and bright.

To: mark@facebook.com  
From: esaverin@gmail.com  
Subject: Re: byron

It's just a line from a poem, Mark.

To: esaverin@gmail.com  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: Re: byron

What's gone and what's past help  
Should be past grief

To: mark@facebook.com  
From: esaverin@gmail.com  
Subject: Re: byron

That's Shakespeare, not Byron.  I do know how to use Google.

I thought that you could only relate to code.  You didn't define any variables in that last email, did you.

To: esaverin@gmail.com  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: Re: byron

I need to talk to you.  

To: mark@facebook.com  
From: esaverin@gmail.com  
Subject: Re: byron

What's different this time than last?

To: esaverin@gmail.com  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: Re: byron

You've opened the emails, so obviously you have some interest in finding out.

-

When she opens the door, Eduardo is lying on the bed with a laptop on his stomach, graceful and relaxed, reading stock quotes and the business section of the _New York Times_.  She's seen him like this a thousand times, this is not a new sight, but now, somehow, it's changed.

Mark has to keep reminding herself how different everything is, because slipping and falling on your ass gets tiring after a while.

"Oh," Eduardo says, "you're here."

She enters the room even though she hasn't been invited in and hovers around the doorway.  "Hi," Mark says.  It is a nothing word, a pitiful beginning, and she will do better than that in the next ten seconds.  And she does.  "I'm sorry," she says, and though those two words are only marginally bigger than the first one, they hold within themselves so much more.

Her skin doesn't feel as tight anymore.

Eduardo says, "what?" and looks up from his laptop.

"I'm sorry," Mark repeats.  "For what happened.  For everything that's happened, from June to now.  Up to and including whatever's been going on at the depositions."

"Okay," Eduardo says evenly.  "So why tell me this now?"

That's a good question, Mark thinks.  She could defend herself and her business decisions, open up a wound that's barely scabbed over, go back to the pattern of the past few days.  But that hasn't been working, and she can't run away-- she doesn't _want_ to-- and maybe this time something  different will work.

"Because I miss you," she says.

Eduardo rubs at his eyes.  "That's a terrible reason," he responds.  "But you can come in."

-

Here's the thing:  Mark doesn't regret doing what she did for her company.  It's the kind of move that pretty much labeled her a heartless bitch through the Valley, but what she did made the best business sense at the time.  If Eduardo was an impartial outsider studying her in one of his economics classes then he would have seen it.

But it's different when it's your best friend doing it to you.  Maybe she finally gets that now.

"You miss me," Eduardo repeats, making room for her on the bed.  He closes his laptop.  "What's making you say that?"

"I, um, I have a doctor's appointment in a week," Mark begins, "and I just got the emailed reminder from my assistant right after we, ah, had words.  And I realized that, you know, physically and biologically, you're as much as part of this as I am, and not in a bad way."

"You said it hurt to carry around a reminder," Eduardo points out.  He's always had a terrible poker face, and even she can see through his expression that he's hoping that this conversation might end better.  She's hoping it too, she truly is.  Anger stopped being satisfying, maybe, or detachment hurt more than she could say.

Mark looks down at her hands.  "I don't feel that way all the time," she says quietly.  "All it really does is emphasize how much you should be here during this with me."

"Not to continue circling around the subject, but can I _remind_ you that you wanted me gone.  You wanted me gone so much you drew me out of the thing that was keeping us together."  Eduardo has a headache now, right between the eyes, and Mark can feel one beginning to thud its way into existence.

"Facebook was never the only thing that was keeping us together," Mark says.  "If you thought -- I never meant for you to think that.  I said I needed you, and that-- that's not going to change, that hasn't changed in the time we've been apart.  I didn't just need your money for Facebook, Eduardo, I needed you to be there partnered with me all along."  She kisses him on the lips and while he doesn't kiss back at first, he is unresisting.  "I've been told that I'm not the best at communicating-- maybe I just never used the right words."

Mark leaves him there sitting on the bed, not wanting to overstep anymore than she already has.

-

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: celebrate good times, come on!

I feel like it's time for a viewing of _When Harry Met Sally_.  Yes/yes?

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: you are a strange person

And why will we be watching your happy place movie?

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject:  he's her *lobster*

I don't know what happened yesterday between Mark and Wardo but clearly it was something good, because 1., you were able to come over to my place last night, 2., there's nothing troublesome on the internet so far, and 3., Mark is behaving like a normal person and hasn't used her emotionally disturbed robot face or creepy-ass stare at all this morning even though I accidentally dropped a cheeto or five on her head.

I mean, it isn't noon yet, but I have high hopes.

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: please stop with the pop culture references

I would have been able to find out what happened between them if you hadn't dragged me away to your man-cave for ravishing.

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: neverrrrrrr

Yeah, and you minded that _so much_.

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: I am just saying

If I didn't actually love you, I would be calling your mother to tell her about your four-foot-tall pile of laundry and the phallic structure composed entirely of duct tape and beer cans.

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: offense!  

It's a good thing you love me then ;)

xoxo

PS: and that statue will never not be awesome, just saying.

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: [blank]

I don't know what's going on in your and Dustin's emails that's making him look so gleefully smug, but it's both distracting me and terrifying the interns.

To: mark@facebook.com  
From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: Re: [blank]

He signed his last email with a winking emoticon and an xoxo.  I don't even know.

-

It's kind of an old joke that Mark can only comprehend things if they're written out in code.  It's an old joke, starting from when she was in high school, and it's one that fucking gets on her nerves.  She might not be good with emotions, but she does know that they exist.  It's just that with code, everything is defined.  If you don't define a variable, there's an error.  It's as simple as that.

Eduardo understands numbers; Eduardo understands the weather.  Chris understands old books and old English.  Dustin understands people so intrinsically that in another life, he would have been a damn good therapist.  And yet they all turn to things that they don't understand when things get going.  Eduardo turns to words to help him express what he feels.

Mark can't do that.

She opens up CodeBlocks and begins to type:  
 _  
#include <iostream>  
using namespace std;  
int main()  
{  
int mark, wardo;  
    int result;  
    wardo = 2;  
    mark = 1;  
    mark = mark+1;  
    result = mark - wardo;  
}_

And there, on the page, that's something that makes sense to her.  If she is this one thing, and Eduardo is this other thing, if they are defined as such, then when she hits F9 and the program runs, the result of mark - wardo is zero.  

Dustin said he dreamed in code once and it terrified him.  Mark said she thought it sounded peaceful.  Dustin had called her disturbed.

If she were to send to Eduardo, she doubts he would understand.

It's sad.  Look how simple it is, look how beautiful.

-

Dustin takes Eduardo out for a beer, because man does he look like he needs one.  They're both underage but it's okay, there are places that will let them in even though Dustin's pretty sure that both their faces have been plastered across, like, _Forbes_ or Gawker or maybe even the _New York Times_ , something awful like that that shows how ridiculous this all is.

"So, Wardo," Dustin says, after he's ordered for both of them.  "How're you?"

Eduardo fixes him with a glare.  "Like shit," he says hoarsely.  "What did you think?"

"I thought you and Mark were talking," Dustin says.  "If not, you can talk to me.  Man to man, because we are men and that is what we do in times of distress."

Eduardo looks skeptical, like a I thought men went to strip clubs and watched other men chase around a ball on a field when they are in a period of distress kind of skepticism.  

"I can prove it!" Dustin insists.  He takes a sip of his drink.  "Okay, so I was spying on Mark earlier today, and she was writing code with your name in it."

"And you know this how?"

"Stole her laptop when she went to the bathroom to throw up," Dustin responds easily.  "She's having problems putting everything into terms that she can understand."

"She wasn't earlier."

"Like I said," Dustin shrugs, "you're both fucking idiots.  God, Wardo-- stop thinking about this in terms of the company, in terms of the dilution, or lawsuit, or even in terms of _Mark_.  Maybe think about it, like, you're going to be having a _baby_ together.  Maybe it doesn't feel real to you yet, cause you haven't really been here, you've been lawsuiting up, but it's definitely real to Mark.  She's been puking and going to doctor's appointments and seeing her body warp freakishly for weeks now, like, I wasn't actively trying to stare at her chest but there's definitely action happening there.  And she's totally going to deny it, but she has a scan of the ultrasound saved to her computer desktop."

Eduardo blinks.  Dustin feels like he's done his job.

"You're both so dumb," he sighs, "and dancing around each other like wounded animals-- I get that you're hurt and angry, but you both keep doing it to each other.  Stop going in circles."

Eduardo's eyes are large and limpid, dark and injured-looking, but he doesn't say no.

They both get really, really drunk.

-

Eduardo (22:38) ii dont ahte yuo

Mark (22:43) what

Eduardo (22:45) i thout you shldd knwo that i doknt hate u

Mark (22:46) are you drunk eduardo?

Eduardo (22:47) yessssss

Eduardo (22:47) dustin fownd me

Eduardo (22:47) does foiund have a w in it?????

Mark (22:50) so youre not mad at me anymore?

Eduardo (22:52) no i jsut dont hate u bit i m still verry veryy mad

Mark (22:54) okay.

-

Eduardo has a very bad hangover the next morning.

-

Sy calls Mark at ten in the morning.

"I'm glad I caught you before you left," he says.  "I tried your assistant, but she told me you were busy."

Mark blinks at the screen and hits Control+S.  "I was.  I mean, I am.  Why are you calling?"

"There's no hearing today."

"What?"

Sy clears his throat.  "Yeah, it's been changed.  Gretchen told me that Eduardo's asked for it to be delayed for, let's see, delayed for eight days."  There's rustling as he presumably checks the date; Sy likes having things in front of him, on paper and printed with ink.  "Eight days, that's right."  
 _  
Eight days,_ Mark thinks.  That's after the doctor's appointment.  That gives her some time.

"That's fine with me," she says.  "Thank you for calling.  I need to get back to work now."

"Of course, of course.  We'll adjust our meetings accordingly; don't worry.  I'll email you with the relevant details."

"Thanks, okay.  Bye."  She hangs up.

So that's interesting.

-

To: esaverin@gmail.com  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: i have heard interesting things

You delayed more hearings IS IT TRUE LOVE

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: esaverin@gmail.com  
Subject: are you high?

I know we got drunk last night but I thought even you knew better than to smoke pot at work.

To: esaverin@gmail.com  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: i am not high

I am EXCITED

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: esaverin@gmail.com  
Subject: um

Dustin, you know this doesn't mean anything except that I am concerned for the health of my unborn child.

To: esaverin@gmail.com  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: i do not care

I am EXCITED

TRUE LOVE

To: dmosk@facebook.com  
From: esaverin@gmail.com  
Subject: you

I'm beating a dead horse with this, am I not.

To: esaverin@gmail.com  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: me

Yup!

-

Mark's doctor is a nice woman.  Her mother found her the practice originally, using contacts she has from med school.  Doctor Cohen has a bachelors of science and a degree in the classics from Wellesley, and then went on to become an OB/GYN.  She speaks Latin and Greek and also knows the name of every bone in the human foot; she'd said it could be useful some time.  So Mark appreciates that.

When Mark shows up in her office trailing Eduardo, a half-eaten box of Frosted Flakes, and several laptop wires, she doesn't even blink.

"Mr. Saverin, I presume?"  Doctor Cohen holds out her hand for Eduardo to shake.  He looks kind of flustered but takes it anyways, trying not to drop anything.

"Uh, yeah, nice to meet-- er, is there somewhere I can put all this?"  She nods her head at an empty chair and Eduardo looks a little relieved.  "Thanks.  So I guess Mark's told you about me?"  He places everything down carefully and the doctor responds.

"We require a medical history, Mr. Saverin.  When Ms. Zuckerberg told me she was pregnant, I asked for the name of the father and she told me.  She was able to provide some of the necessary information but there's more I'll need from you, just to be thorough."

"Right."  Eduardo's hand goes to his hair.  "I'll be happy to fill out anything you need."

She smiles.  "Excellent, much appreciated.  Okay, I'll just leave the room while you change and get on the table, Mark.  Be back in a minute."

She leaves the room, closing the door noiselessly, and Eduardo spins to look at Mark.  "Change?"

"Yeah, I need to put on the paper gown and get in the stirrups and everything so she can examine me-- haven't you ever watched any medically-themed porn, Wardo?  We spent most of our free time with Dustin in college, it would be impossible for you to have _not_."

" _Mark_."  He pinches the bridge of his nose.  

Her response is quiet.  "It's the doctor's office.  What did you think was going to happen?  Besides, you've seen me naked before, that was kind of a prerequisite to the pregnancy.  Unless we were orthodox Jews, which I'm pretty sure we aren't, okay."

"It's awkward."

"So turn around.  And once I'm done you can stay near my head and away from my genitalia.  It's honestly not that difficult."

He does and after a few moments, Mark is on the exam table and Doctor Cohen is knocking on the door.

"Now," she says briskly, pulling on clean gloves.  "As this is Mr. Saverin's first time here, I was wondering if he would like to hear the fetal heartbeat before we do your internal exam?"

Mark nods.  "Go ahead."

Eduardo puts up a hand.  "I don't need to--"

Mark grabs it and forces it down.  "No, seriously Wardo, you're going to want to hear this."

It shouldn't be anything really, it's just a fast-running thump and a blurry image on the screen, something he's seen in dozens of episodes of TV shows, but he hears the heartbeat, _healthy_ , and Eduardo remembers what Mark said only a week ago,  _I have this constant reminder of you with me, all the time_ and it hits him hard, hits him upside the head that this is _real_ , and just-- "oh," he breathes out, shocked and absolutely, wonderfully, totally thrown.

"I'll just give you two a moment alone," the doctor says, excusing herself.  The door clicks shut.

"I-- yeah.  It would be really hard not to fall in love with her, I've found."  Mark's voice is tentative, a little questioning, and Eduardo smiles.

"I know what you mean," he says and slowly, carefully, he presses a kiss to the top of her head.

-

Eduardo drives Mark back to her house.  It's late enough in the afternoon that she can reason herself away from work and his innate chivalry won't let him abandon her at a bus stop.

"You're not going to want to," Mark says, once they've parked and he's walked her up the path to the door, "but if you'd like, you're welcome to come in."

Eduardo puts his hands in his pockets.  He steels himself.  But he doesn't do it well enough because it only takes a step forward, half a second and a heartbeat, until Mark is so close that their noses would be touching if it weren't for the height difference.

Her voice is small.  "Wardo," she says, and she reaches out a hand to touch his wrist.

He splays his hand over her shoulder, feels the warmth of her skin underneath the coarse fabric of her shirt, lets it seep into him.  Her body has never been cold, he remembers from nights spent in Kirkland, seeping up her warmth.  "Mark," he says, and it's just their names, it's nothing more, but it only takes another instant before they are kissing, before he is taking that warmth and making it his.

"Okay," Mark breathes out, "so I think you should definitely come inside."

Eduardo laughs and she opens the door, fumbling slightly with the keys, and then they're inside and her back is to the wall, Eduardo is kissing her like he hasn't ever done it before, like he didn't do it a million times at Harvard, and she drops her bag to the floor.  It hits the ground with a sharp thunk.

"I'm still suing you," he manages to gasp out, but Mark is busy untucking his dress shirt and his hands are sliding up her back, fiddling with her bra strap until it finally unhooks, and once she's gotten his shirt untucked she moves onto his belt, deftly working it out, and it's like nothing matters, like nothing has even changed.

"Good," Mark says, and pulls him toward the bedroom.  "That's fine with me."

And then they're up the stairs and on the bed, she shimmies out of her underwear, and she's whispering that he needs to touch her again, that she wants him, that she _needs_ him now, right now, and there's absolutely no way that Eduardo can resist that.  He cups her breast and kisses a wet line down over the convex curve of her stomach, tasting the salt on her skin, Mark's hand twists in his hair and _pulls_ , and it's exactly the same and different from what he remembers, but it means what it always did.  _Always will,_ something inside of him says, but then Mark's hand finds its way to a very interesting place and Eduardo ceases to think at all.

-

Dustin stops by with dinner.  Mark's pretty sure that he's appointed himself her personal chef, and she knows for a fact that he's read several articles on the internet about nutrition during pregnancy because she has had kale three times in the past seven days, and that is three times too many.

Mark answers the door, delightfully rumpled and in Eduardo's button-down and cotton drawstring shorts, the only pair she has left that fit easily over her belly.  She should probably go clothes shopping before she's forced to wear a dress to work.

Dustin eyes her suspiciously, not even greeting her before speaking.  "You have sex hair."  

Mark feels her curls.  They're definitely more messy than usual.  "No I don't."

"Please," Dustin snorts.  "I have seen post-coital you and Wardo god knows how many times.  You totally have sex hair."

"Fine, maybe I do.  It's not really your business."  She tries to peer into the bag he's carrying.  "What's for dinner tonight?  More things involving brown rice?"

Dustin stares at her.  "Mark."

"What?"  She tries to take the bag from him, but he refuses.  "Do I have a hickey or something?"

"Yes, actually, you do, but _Mark_."

" _What_?  Dustin, seriously."

He grins suddenly, and it's almost maniacal.  "You and Wardo did it!  This is-- it's huge!"

"I never knew you cared that much about size before, Moscovitz."

Dustin rolls his eyes.  "Ha ha, cheap jokes, very funny, you know what I mean.  How'd it happen?  Did he say he loves you?"

Mark purses her lips.  "Uh, no.  He took off my bra, said he was still suing me, and then we fucked our way to the bedroom."

Dustin's eyebrows shoot up.  "Wow.  Romantic."

"Didn't affect the quality at all," Mark matches his eyebrow raise.  "You should come into the kitchen, I'm starving."

Dustin follows her, shutting the door behind him.  "I am not your personal chef, you know.  I am a highly valued programmer and member of the operating team."

"Your actions tell a different story."  She precedes him into the kitchen and slumps down into a chair.  "What's up with you?"

"Well, I'm currently disappointed that your great love story totally, like, sucks balls."

Mark rumples his hair.  "You're such a good friend, Dustin."

He puts water on to boil and begins dicing an onion.  Mark watches the knife go up and down, oddly hypnotic and soothing.  "I really am."

-

Mark wants something real.  Mark wants something solid, something with a skeleton of steel and a cast-iron body, something built from the inside out and _substantial_.

What is going on now is so insubstantial it's barely worth mentioning.  It's tentative, and maddening, and everything about it is reminiscent of the first few days after they hooked up at Harvard, unsure and hesitant but still wanting.

It's awkward.  She's done with awkward, now.  Her body is becoming awkward the more pregnant she gets; not that she's really showing the way her mom says she will in a month or two, but she's not the skinny, twitchy-limbed iteration of herself she's always been most comfortable with anymore.  Eduardo doesn't mind the changes, but who really would disparage having bigger tits?  But if her body is going to do that she doesn't want anything else to.

And then there's other things.  There's the lawsuit.  He hasn't dropped the case, and there's a pretty loud part of Mark that doesn't _want_ him to.  She wants Eduardo to get what he's due, if only because he's going to be stuck with her one way or another for the next eighteen years and this seems only fair.  This seems like it's the only way to make it fair, legally and securely.

The deposition is moved back another four days, because both their lawyers are working on other cases, easier cases, but they take up time.  Marylin Delpy is the one to email Mark about it, adds a _hope you're all right with this_ at the bottom, but Mark knows that she's really asking if Mark herself is okay.  So she emails back and writes _yes, no problem, everything is good_ and hopes it will reassure.

In the mean time, she has sex.  The universe keeps giving them _time_ and Eduardo has a hotel room so they take advantage of it one night, make out sloppily in the elevator and then barely manage to get down the hallway to his door, spending unnecessary minutes fumbling with the key card like they're drunk (and they're not, of course, but it feels like they should be anyways) like this is all new, even though it really, really isn't.  They have sex in her kitchen, over the nice wooden table that Mark's mom always comments on when she visits.  They make up for months of lost time and misunderstanding.

The lawsuit better fucking settle, Mark thinks, as Eduardo grips her waist as he pushes into her, breathing harshly against her neck, nipping at her collarbone.  She'll think of this at the deposition, ghost her finger over the marks he'll leave and see him blush, throw him off-track.

(They're probably both still a little angry.  The peace they have is a cold war peace, one where both sides have nuclear weapons and trigger-happy hands.

Not that she isn't still sorry.  You can forgive someone and still be utterly pissed at them, and Eduardo knows it too).

Dustin remarks on her sex hair and love bites and everything else enough that Mark has to remind him that hey, he hasn't gotten any in like a fortnight because his girlfriend is on another fucking coast.  Not that she doesn't wish Chris was over here in California-- because she does, she needs to talk to her about Eduardo and pregnancy and awkwardness, she needs her best girl friend because her young female lawyer is in no way a replacement-- but it's a valid point, like, you're a newly registered monk and I'm getting the hot Jewish-Brazilian sex every night.  And sometimes during the day.

She doesn't really want the depositions to start again.  She doesn't want to see Eduardo sitting across from her like that ever again.  Every time they fuck they make their situation a little more complicated, a little harder to unravel.

Mark can't _wait_ to start things up with the Winkleveii again, though.  That's one fight she's just itching to win.

-

To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
From: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: a whole new world

okay so it's not true love forever and ever just yet

but they're getting there

i think.

it's all about the _journey_

-

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: you and Eduardo

Talk to him, Mark.

I sincerely cannot stress this enough.

-

Mark takes a deep breath.

She remembers when she was thirteen and pretty much just this concentrated ball of anger and hormones, all the time, pissed off at everyone except for her six year old brother, and that's only because it's hard to stay constantly mad at a chubby little kid with a lisp who looks at you with total adoration in his eyes.  She remembers how her mom always told her, take a deep breath and take a moment before you say anything, just in case.  Count to ten if you have to.  Count to ten in Latin if it's really that bad.  Don't say anything you know that you'll regret.

It's advice that's served her well over the past five or six years, when she was first talking to the Winklevoss twins and they were being condescending, sexist _asshats_ , when she was confronted with dickish tenure-track professors at Harvard who didn't believe that yes, she had done all that work all on her own.  Even when she was up against the Ad Board-- well, in essence, anyways.

And she's going to use it now.

"Eduardo," Mark says, like the mature, one-year-away-from-legal-adulthood grown-up she is.  "Can I talk to you for a moment?"  

There's something in Eduardo's face that never used to be there in this sort of situation, something that Mark's pretty sure she recognizes as hope.

"Yeah," he says, and makes room for her on the couch.  "Okay, yeah, let's give it a try."

Mark breathes again, yoga breaths that Dustin taught her one day, on the advice of a Cosmo magazine he found in the common room some afternoon during finals week.

"I want to give you an explanation," she says, and sits next to him, resisting the urge to cuddle into his side.

"My lawyers are going to rake me over hot coals," Wardo murmurs, his voice reverberating, but it's definitely good-natured.  So far everything is going well.  Alright.

"Gretchen _is_ kind of terrifying," Mark responds, "but, uh, that's something for a different time.  Look, it's just, we could argue forever about who left who, and we can and could spend tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees trying to establish that.  And I acted stupidly, and so did you-- we know each other too well, Wardo, it was dumb."

"Okay," Wardo says, cautious but not angry yet.

"And you have _every right_ to be angry at me, not just for the dilution but also for not telling you about the baby until like ten days ago, though I hope I've made up for that recently, just a little, and I want you to be with me for the rest of it, I _need_ you with me for the rest of it, actually, because there is no way I'm letting Dustin anywhere near a delivery room.  But I can defend diluting your shares, and I _do_ , to investors and to, uhm, to myself.  I thought about it a lot after it happened.  Except I can't win that argument with myself.  I can win it when I pretend it's other people, or that it's in a textbook, like reading about the Sherman Antitrust Act or something, but it's not like that.  It's you and me, and it _was_ personal, and it was _such_ a dick move.  You, you're my best friend, you don't _do_ that to your best friend.  And I suck at being a friend, you're like a hundred times better at friendship than I am, but it's something even I should have known.  So _please_ be angry at me for that, you have every right, but I am just asking you, please don't hate me for it.  And I'm talking about how you feel when you're sober.  Please, Wardo."  Mark exhales, shakily, and allows herself to relax into him, hoping that he won't push her away.

He doesn't.  He smiles, and kisses her, and even if the wound isn't fully healed at least they're not spitefully picking off the scab before everything is ready to be exposed to air.

"The lawsuit--" Mark begins, but Eduardo shushes her.

"Later," he says, "we have time, later."

She goes for a different tack.  "Okay, Dustin dropped off a baby name book earlier, and I know I said I wanted to name her Ada, after Ada Lovelace, but if you're opposed--"

"Ada's good," Eduardo says, "and a good role model for our daughter to look up too--" and somewhere, Mark just _knows_ , Dustin is crowing 'I told you so', "but she's going to need a middle name."

"Zuckerberg-Saverin is the worst hyphenate _ever_ ," Mark grumbles, as Eduardo fishes out the book and begins flipping through the pages.

-

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: BABY NAMES!

Kaylee  
River  
Inara  
Saffron  
Mal  
Jayne  
Zoe  
Serenity

all brilliant, am I right

From: mark@facebook.com  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: we discussed this already

Dustin, the show is barely off the air, okay.  there could still be a movie.

besides, Jayne is a man's name.  as is Mal.  and Inara is a space hooker.  and River's crazy.  and Saffron's a space hooker and a criminal.  and Serenity is the name of the SHIP.

Wardo would not agree that any of them are good role models for his daughter, plus we are not going to raise her to be a spaceship either, she is a living breathing human being.

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: mark@facebook.com  
Subject: my heart will go on

AHAHAHA that's how you got him to agree to naming the kid ada, bc she was the first computer programmer and a good role model!

omg you are an evil mastermind.  and dustie is still a really good middle name for a girl.  like dusty springfield, but hipper.  ada dustie saverberg.  zuckerin?  

From: mark@facebook.com  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: go code or something

I will never name my child after you.

-

The next thing to figure out is, of course, the lawsuit.  They both have to explain the past fortnight to their lawyers, though Mark would wager that her conversation is a lot simpler to undertake.  It's pretty easy to explain that while Eduardo is still suing her (and she wants him to get his fair share, because he deserves it), she isn't his number one enemy.  And Sy is definitely relieved that there isn't going to be a messy custody suit, so that makes up for any other number of sins.

Marylin even gives her a hug.  Mark stands stiff as a board; she can't allow herself to relax through it.

"Good for you," Marylin says, and even Mark can tell she means it.

-

From: dmosk@facebook.com  
To: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
Subject: deep breaths

I think they're actually going to be okay.

From: christi.hughes@harvard.edu  
To: dmosk@facebook.com  
Subject: Re: deep breaths

Yes.  I do too.

-

Mark doesn't really like being pregnant.

She discovers that she liked her body the way it was before, with pale skin and loose limbs and a flat stomach from lack of consistent eating habits rather than exercise.  She liked the way it was at Harvard, stealing Eduardo's t-shirts and curling up against him with her laptop, nothing in her way and nothing stopping her.

She still steals his shirts, of course, but now they stretch and expand over her stomach.  She practically ruins one of his AEPi shirts because of her _chest_ (she has significant boobs now, which is just-- strange and offputting), but it was old and worn and comfortable and he tells her that he doesn't really mind.

"Aren't you supposed to be at school?" Mark asks, a week after the rescheduled deposition.  "You've been out here for practically a month."

Eduardo takes a deep breath.  "I had to take a semester off," he explains, "because of the lawsuit.  I was going to do summer credits to make up for it so I could graduate on time, and I know it's not-- don't say anything, it was what my advisor told me that I had to do if I didn't want to fail out.  And then the discovery for the lawsuit moved so much faster than I had thought it would."

She bites her lip, restrains the unsavory thoughts that jump into her mind.  "Yeah, I know.  But what about, you know, everything else?"

Wardo wraps an arm around her.  There's still a little bit of Mark that wants to automatically stiffen her spine, like she did when they first started sleeping together and being affectionate where other people can see them.  It's not an intentional response, but it happens.  

His thumb starts stroking over her collarbone.  "I don't know," he says.  "There's Stanford out here, but--"

"But Harvard is Harvard.  I know.  If Facebook keeps growing, and it _will_ , now that we have money and we keep getting more, then I probably can't go back, with or without a baby."

"But it's less important to you," Eduardo comments.  Mark nods.

"And my family too, they understand.  I think they understand."  She shifts a little.  "My hip is cramping up."

"We can talk about the future later," Eduardo says.  "I don't have to make any decisions for another month or two."

"Okay."  His other hands presses into her hip and begins massaging away the cramp.  She missed him touching her.  "That's fine with me."

He kisses her.  She missed that too.  "Good."

It's odd, how they fall back into their rhythms, even though everything is a little more hesitant than before.  But it isn't bad.  Not yet.

Maybe it won't ever turn sour.  Maybe this time it'll all work out.

Maybe this time, it'll be better than it ever was before.

Mark really hopes so.

  
_(you felt the coming wave-- told me we'd all be brave-- you said you wouldn't flinch._   
_but in the years that passed-- since I saw you last-- you haven't moved an inch._

 _your sword's grown old and rusty, burnt beneath the rising sun._   
_it's locked up like a trophy, forgetting all the things it's done._   
_and though it's been a long time, you're right back where you started from_   
_I see it in your eyes, that now you're giving up the gun_

 _I see you shining your way_   
_go on, go on_   
_go on_

 _-vampire weekend.)_


End file.
